About Me

A little bit about me: I’m a writer of fiction and games who works full-time in the tabletop games industry. I’m originally from the Hudson Valley region of New York, but after going to college in the Midwest, I landed in the Twin Cities of Minnesota. When I’m not writing or gaming, I enjoy reading about history, practicing yoga, singing karaoke, and traveling abroad. You can get in touch with me here.

Writer

I cut my teeth as a writer of fanfiction in the early days of FanFiction.net, so perhaps it’s no surprise that some of my earliest published pieces of fiction are short stories for media tie-in projects. When writing my own fiction, I tend to gravitate toward the romantic fantasy genre with the occasional foray into gothic horror and historical fiction. Besides prose, I’ve written for tabletop roleplaying games published by Cubicle 7 and Fantasy Flight Games on a freelance basis. I ran TripleCrit.com, a blog for storytellers of all sorts, from 2011 to 2021. I also spent some time reviewing games and writing advice for gamemasters and roleplayers as a contributor for Geek & Sundry. Elsewhere on my portfolio, you can check out the full list of tabletop games as well as works of fiction I’ve written, edited, or developed. If you’re an aspiring author yourself, you can read some of my tips, tricks, and insights about publishing on my blog.

Roleplayer

I started out with freeform play-by-post roleplay in the late ’90s and finally crossed over into traditional tabletop roleplaying games in 2009. The first real RPG campaign I played in was Dark Heresy, originally published by Black Industries, where I developed a weakness for rolling on random tables and tragic PC deaths. I have my college’s Roleplaying Guild to thank for exposing me to a wide variety of games, and when I’m not running a game myself, I love to try as many different systems as possible. I’m a big fan of playing Call of Cthulhu, Legend of the Five Rings, Powered by the Apocalypse systems, Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay (any edition), and indie storytelling games such as Microscope and Lovecraftesque. I offer my advice for how to be a better roleplayer here on my blog.

Gamemaster

By the time my first character died a gruesome death after a failed Fear test in Dark Heresy, I was hooked on RPGs and ready to take a seat on the other side of the gamemaster’s screen. I quickly grew to love the creative outlet of developing original scenarios as well as homebrewing settings and rules. To me, gamemastering was another form of writing, one where I could collaborate in real-time with others at the table. I’ve most often run campaigns using Dungeons & Dragons 5e because that’s what players ask for most, but I like running all sorts of different one-shots at gaming conventions. You can read my how-to articles on creating compelling adventures, preparing for sessions, and learning the craft of the game master on my blog.

Professional Blurb

Katrina Ostrander has served as editor for over a dozen media tie-in novellas spanning multiple genres including cyberpunk, fantasy, Lovecraftian horror, and science fiction. She has worked with emerging writers as well as New York Times–bestselling authors. As the Creative Director of Story and Setting with the Asmodee Franchise Development Team, she oversees the internal and licensed development of the company’s proprietary IPs. Besides her work as an editor of tie-in fiction and developer of IPs, she has written for or developed over a dozen roleplaying game products, including adventures, supplements, and core rulebooks.